NYU Grossman School of Medicine offers the 12-month post-doctoral fellowship with the Gender and Sexuality Service and the Adolescent Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT-A) Program in the Anita Saltz Institute for Anxiety and Mood Disorders part of the Child Study Center at Hassenfeld Children’s Hospital at NYU Langone.

This unique postdoctoral fellowship, offered through the Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, is split between the Gender and Sexuality Service and the DBT-A program. It is intended for psychologists who have successfully completed an American Psychological Association–approved internship and wish to refine their skills in transgender health and mental health as well as provide dialectical behavioral therapy.

The fellowship’s co-coordinators are Samantha Busa, PsyD and Jeremy Wernick, LCSW. The DBT-A Program is a part of the larger Anxiety and Mood Disorders service, led by Aleta Angelosante, PhD.

Fellowship Training

This fellowship focuses on the health and wellness of transgender and gender expansive youth. In your role with the Gender and Sexuality Service, you will have the opportunity to take part in a gender affirming clinical services including assessment for medical interventions, psychotherapy, and co-leading groups with expert supervision. You are also a part of the larger Transgender Youth Health Program, a multidisciplinary team of adolescent medicine physicians, psychologists, social workers, and nurses who provide gender affirming medical care to transgender and gender expansive youth. As transgender and gender expansive youth also often display mental health vulnerabilities, fellows also have significant exposure to individuals with anxiety disorders, mood disorders, ADHD and other externalizing disorders, autistic spectrum disorders, learning disorders, and other conditions.

As the incidence of suicidal and other life-threatening behaviors is disproportionately high among transgender and gender expansive youth, we also provide training in the DBT-A Program. In your role with the DBT-A Program, you have the opportunity to join a comprehensive consultation team providing individual therapy, facilitating multifamily skills and/or graduate groups, and phone coaching. Every patient enrolled in the DBT-A Program struggles with emotion dysregulation and life-threatening behaviors (suicide attempts, suicidal ideation, self-harm), many of whom seek treatment to address symptoms of post-traumatic stress, anxiety and mood disorders, or difficulties with substance use and disordered eating. Addressing these complex problems requires multiple points of intervention and fellows have the opportunity to receive supervision from a DBT-Linehan Board of Certification, certified clinician. and other members of the consultation team in providing DBT-A, DBT parent training, DBT-prolonged exposure (PE), and other adaptations of the treatment.

Fellows are expected to carry 15 total cases (approximately 10 cases in the Gender and Sexuality Service and at least 5 families/patients enrolled in the DBT-A Program across all 3 stages of treatment). Fellows are also expected to co-lead caregivers of transgender youth support groups and DBT-A multifamily skills groups or graduate groups. Fellows receive didactic training in transgender health and DBT-A throughout the year.

Fellows also have the opportunity to supervise an extern and participate in a new supervisor’s group, and to participate in scholarly activities such as writing journal articles, teaching didactics, and refining presentation skills.

We are actively monitoring the COVID-19 pandemic and are taking steps to protect the safety of our providers and patients. Currently, the experiences of this post-doctoral fellowship are available in a hybrid model with both days in person and remote days.

Applicants with interest and experience in minority stress, intersecting identities and systemic inequities impacting transgender youth and their communities are encouraged to apply. Applicants with experience providing DBT and/or working with LGBTQ+ adolescents with an interest in adapting DBT for transgender and gender expansive youth are encouraged to apply.

How to Apply

We accept postdoctoral fellowship applications on a rolling basis, with application review beginning Monday, December 4, 2023 and a final deadline of Friday, December 22, 2023.

Interested candidates should submit a CV, cover letter, three letters of recommendation, and a de-identified evaluation report for a child or adolescent you treated for emotion dysregulation to csc-psychtraining@nyulangone.org. Please specify which training experience you are applying to in the subject of your application email. All submissions should receive a receipt of confirmation within three-to-five business days. If you do not receive a confirmation, kindly resubmit the application.

The salary for this position is $70,000 and is commensurate with experience.